“He didn’t even learn to spell ‘grazie’ correctly,” some Juventus fans muttered as Cristiano Ronaldo communicated his departure from the Bianconeri with an Instagram post where he misspelled one of the most renown Italian words.
The Genius of Madeira had likely little to do with the incompetence of some careless social media manager of his, but this little blunder is perhaps a good sum up of Ronaldo’s three-year experience in Turin. It was an age where he did his job pretty well, but never felt really “close” to the Juventus world.
Cristiano Ronaldo is an amazing professional and, since the day he shook the world of Serie A by agreeing on a four-year deal with the Old Lady, he did exactly what he was expected to do. The numbers speak for themselves. 81 goals out of 98 caps, which earned him a capocannoniere title two seasons ago, are numbers never seen in the Italian top-flight.
Ronaldo was often the one to pull the chestnuts out of the fire for his coaches – be it Max Allegri, Maurizio Sarri or Andrea Pirlo – and for a Juventus side who’s last three years, frankly speaking, were disappointing. The Bianconeri won the title in two out of three seasons, in an age when Juve were already many steps ahead of any form of domestic competition even without him. But they failed miserably in Europe, where they never managed to get past the UCL Quarter Finals.
From that point of view, the whole “Cristiano-Ronaldo-to-Juventus” operation did not bring what the Bianconeri expected. Surely enough, it didn’t bring mutual real love. That love that seemed to be blossoming, when the whole Allianz Stadium welcomed him as an opponent and tributed him a standing ovation after seeing him sinking Juve with an extraterrestrial overhead, never really picked up.
When Cristiano landed in Turin with his massive media presence and coverage, it became clear that he was coming to play according to his own rules. He clocked in, he clocked out, and did his stuff. Outstandingly. But many times, he was rumored to be frustrated and impatient at the need to be, well, just one of the many in a club whose roster was not exactly that of the Galacticos.
His relationships with the Juve managers fluctuated and, although there were never any sensational break-ups or outburst, Ronaldo’s subtle influence and maybe unspoken pretentions could be felt. One cannot but wonder what part they must have played in the recent managerial changes at the Continassa.
Coach Max Allegri, another primadonna, left Juventus after a five-year tenure in 2019, only one season after CR7’s landing. The timing was suspicious to say the least. His successor Maurizio Sarri, another one who generally wants to have the last word – and rightly so – lasted only one campaign. With the more accommodating Andrea Pirlo, at his first experience as a coach, things went better but Juventus’ season ended like we all know.
With the return of sergeant Allegri at the helm, Cristiano Ronaldo must have thought that he had more to lose than to gain from extending his stay in the Belpaese. And that’s fair enough.
His last-minute move to Manchester United puts the whole operation in a different perspective. It would have been one thing to see him sign for cross-town rivals Man City to face Leo Messi at PSG in a European derby between the two clubs that are mercilessly cannibalizing the transfer market. But it’s different to see him re-join the Red Devils, the club where he player from 2003 to 2009 and where he really became CR7. A nice and romantic way to close a career that, at 36, cannot be much longer. Good luck to him.
Juventus fans, though, will not be ripping their hair. Deprived (freed?) from Cristiano Ronaldo’s hulking presence, the Bianconeri will be a more balanced team and can now seriously think about planning how to maintain a gap versus the rest of the Serie A pack that has dangerously narrowed in the past few seasons.
CR7’s salvific powers distracted the attention from the cracks that are starting to appear in the Juve roster – Wojciech Szczesny’s inconsistency between the sticks, an ageing defense despite Matthijs De Ligt’s addition, Paulo Dybala’s stagnant growth. With no Cristiano headers to save the day anymore, the Bianconeri‘s management will have no choice but recognize that the king is naked or at least is taking off his clothes. And take action on that.
For Serie A, though, things are a bit different. Cristiano Ronaldo’s arrival was a true blessing in terms of exposure for the whole world of calcio. His departure comes at a terrible time, at the end of a summer that saw an authentic exodus out of the Belpaese.
In the space of a month, the Serie A lost Gianluigi Donnarumma, Achraf Hakimi, Romelu Lukaku, not to mention an up-and-coming defender like Cristian Romero, and without forgetting a presence like Antonio Conte. Cristiano’s departure was, so to say, the cherry on top.
The result might be a more balanced league, where the only name left with a global appeal is 40-year-old Zlatan Ibrahimovic. Things may get fun as there is no clear Scudetto favorite at this stage, but we expect the Italian clubs to struggle even more than usual to make their way in the Champions League.
Long gone are the days when the Serie A was the non plus ultra of European football, but the last few years seemed to have at least brought an encouraging change in the trend, with players like CR7 and Lukaku making their home in the Belpaese. All that was wiped out in the space of a summer though, relegating once again the Serie A to its role of a second-choice league. With his last-minute flight from Turin, Cristiano Ronaldo clearly reminded us about how things stand.